Mark Shuttleworth: "I simply have zero interest in the crowd who wants to be different. Leet. 'Linux is supposed to be hard so it's exclusive' is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say." He's right. Lots of interesting insights in this blog post - I may not agree with everything Ubuntu does, but at least it's doing something.

All the CLA is doing is taking away responsibility from the project if your code infringes someone elses patent. If for some reason the project changes license to something you don't like as a result of being able to, you can simply fork at the last point that wasn't applicable.

It becomes a question of whether you trust the entity, and that is a personal decision. It clearly isn't actually about CLA's though, as I'm sure your system has software that uses one right now. If you don't trust Canonical, don't use Ubuntu, no one is infringing your rights or freedom, why infringe upon theirs?

Canonical has a right to protect themselves, and are free to invest where they wish. You are free to utilize their work or use something else. What are you actually accomplishing by ranting about it though? You are just wasting your own time and time is the only true resource we ever have.

All the CLA is doing is taking away responsibility from the project if your code infringes someone elses patent.

Copyright assignment goes a lot further though: it takes away your right to relicense the software you wrote. A CLA (typically) doesn't. Also copyright assignment gives i.e. Canonical the right to relicense the software you wrote as they wish. CLA's (typically) don't.

If you don't trust Canonical, don't use Ubuntu, no one is infringing your rights or freedom, why infringe upon theirs?

Bitching about Canonical doesn't infringe upon their rights or freedom.